“Commercial building automation,” or “commercial automation,” refers to the use of computer and information technology to control commercial building systems, such as lighting, HVAC, audio-visual, smoke detection, security, and shading, among others. Using specialized hardware and control logic, building devices can monitor their environment and can be controlled automatically. Although commercial automation has been available at some level of sophistication for some time, it steadily becomes more practical, both from a technological and cost perspective.
Lighting automation, in particular, has evolved over time. Lighting systems now exist in which luminaires that comprise control logic and controllable lamps are networked together, in what is sometimes referred to as “connected lighting” or networked “smart lighting.” In such a network of “smart nodes,” the sensors that are associated with the luminaires collect data about the local environment, such as data related to occupancy and data related to ambient lighting in the vicinity of the luminaires. The networked sensors and luminaires communicate with one other and adjust the light output of the lamps via the control logic, in some cases based on the sensor data.
There can be a large number of such connected devices within a building, in the hundreds, or even thousands, of devices sharing data with one another. Consequently, there are various issues to consider in planning and implementing a system of connected devices, so that the devices are installed and operate in a coordinated way. For example, it is important for an engineer who is commissioning a connected lighting system to have knowledge of the connected system's topology, which includes having knowledge of the way in which the constituent devices are interrelated or arranged, and of where each device is within a building, within a room within the building, and in relation to one or more other devices within the connected system. Understanding the layout of light sources and sensors is important for various applications, including configuring daylight harvesting scenarios, organizing the light sources in groups, defining scenes, and performing maintenance. However, discovering the connected system's topology manually can be labor-intensive and, consequently, can be costly, in some cases prohibitively costly.
Thus, what is needed is a technique for discovering the topology of a connected system, without at least some of the disadvantages and costs in the prior art.